Wissmann statue, Hamburg

Tue Nov 13 04:43:10 CST 2012

Matthew.   What sort of lower vessel have you woken me up to.

Kai you German highlanders, freaks, are you going to let me land.  Now.
 Let these stupoid Morrison lunatics sing my song.

And Master, one time in this billinilliiem, let me meet me.  you idiot.

I have been a good son, now let's rock..  Bailey, treat me to your father,
because I am now alive.  You weird freakazoid.  Let's teach these humanoids
a thing or two. \

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 3:46 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

> Hi,
>  Thanks for the response. When I was there the statue was in front of the
> Afrikahaus (how appropriate!) but I haven't been there in some time. More's
> the pity as I do like Hamburg.
> And I'm sure Kai knows more about this.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Ruth Flatscher <ruflatsch at gmail.com>
> *To:* Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
> *Cc:* Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>; "pynchon-l at waste.org"
> <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Monday, November 12, 2012 11:09 PM
> *Subject:* Wissmann statue, Hamburg
>
> hallo mc,
> you mean the Hermann von Wissman statue in Hamburg, which used to stand in
> front of the university and was re-erected some years ago near the harbour
> entrance, in the course of an arts/cultural project? it seems to have been
> removed again after 2 years, and I could not find out where it has ended
> up, perhaps Kai might know :)
> it has been controversially discussed for glorifying colonial myths and
> racist/chauvinist points of view.
> http://www.afrika-hamburg.de/english.html
> cheers,
> R
>
>
> On 12 November 2012 22:41, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:
>
>
>
> Dear Kai,
>
> One of the great things about the P-list is that users can post their
> reader experience and their reflections upon it, this provides a corpus of
> material for qualitative research.
>
> Thanks for giving your take on things, Kai, it is concise and deep. I
> think I would also take VL over IV (perhaps just because it's longer), but
> I do like the music in IV.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
> ps Have you ever posted a picture of that Herrero statue there in Hamburg
> (in front of a building though I forget where)? I bet a lot of folks here
> know nothing about it.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> To: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 1:37 PM
> Subject: Re: No novels from Roth anymore
>
>
> What Pynchon means to me? The triptych CoL49---GR---VL is my literary
> window into American culture of the 20th century. And his finest prose is
> as beautiful a Musik as the poems of Emily Dickinson. So I guess he means a
> lot to me, although I do not buy the t-shirts or the coffee brand. My
> attitudes towards AtD do constantly change, but it's definitely a daring
> novel of some significance. Yet IV? Not that I could have written it or
> that I didn't like the first read with you people during that hazy summer
> 2009. And to say that it brings new readers is certainly not completely
> wrong, though I know at least of one reader who was so turned off by IV
> that he'll probably never pick up a Pynchon novel again. But when we
> compare IV to VL (and that's the only fair comparison, imo), we cannot help
> but have to recognize the former one's flatness. VL takes place in 1984 and
> looks back to the 1960s, its characters build a three generational pattern:
> Through this the
> novel is able to unfold some complexity. In contrast to this, IV is
> one-dimensional: The immediate action is situated in 1969/70 (by this
> returning to the final pages of GR) and there are occasional flashbacks to
> the mid '60s. Not enough to open up a temporal contrast zone that would
> help to recognize the decade as such. Nor are the different generational
> perspectives worked out the way it is done in VL. And while Lew Basnight
> from AtD is to me one of Pynchon's  most excellent characters, Sportello -
> obviously a variation of Basnight - is basically a joke.  Unlike in the
> other books named (one may add M&D) here, I also do not find many sentences
> in IV that would make good poems when cut into lines. So perhaps it's
> better than the average crime novel, but as a work of Thomas Pynchon IV is
> imo a big disappointment. Some do disagree and that's OK. What puzzles me,
> however, is that these are in some cases the same people who - following
> their master's
> voice (see SL-intro)? - express the view that CoL49 is not a good book.
> How one can prefer IV to CoL49 remains an enigma to me. Well, we don't know
> what Pynchon thinks about it these days, but personally I doubt that he -
> like Roth obviously is in the case of Nemesis - would be content with IV as
> his final book. So let's just hope for more to come!
>
>
> On 11.11.2012 15:10, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> >   Let me clarify my response to Kai's post. When I asked "why" it was
> rather clear that Kai's aestetic evaluation was not positive, so telling me
> that "it sucks" is hardly helpful, Rich. I'm not interested in arguing
> aesthetics.
> >
> > When Kai wrote "Wouldn't it be a pity if Inherent Vice turned out to be
> his last book?", perhaps instead of "why" I should have asked 'a pity for
> whom'. Would it be a pity for TP? Why? Because it would not be fitting for
> the master builder to offer us a shack instead of the temple we long for?
> Does it lessen his former works or his own stature and worth? Is it a pity
> that Thomas Mann gave us The Black Swan shortly before his death instead of
> some great novel like The Magic Mountain?
> > Or is it a pity for US in which case I must also ask why. Do we have so
> much invested in TP's status that any percieved shortcoming on TP's part
> affects us as well?
> >
> > It reminds of a professor who argued for Yeats as THE great poet of the
> 20th c. because his production was fantastic right to the last line,
> according to that professor. This seems to be what makes the mark of the
> Master Writer, consistently great writing to the end without turning soft
> or commercial or whatever. But doesn't this discourse have it's own history?
> >
> > The origin of my inquiry lies in the fact that I'm interested in looking
> at what Pynchon means to us, how we consume his texts and produce readings
> that then compete with other people's readings in order to gain some
> currency. Here on the list we see examples of people providing contending
> readings and how they gain traction. Consider the story of the little
> squares in GR that someone thought were film reel squares thus implying a
> cinemagraphic reading of the novel; the idea gained some ground but was
> eventually eroded by the truth of the editing history - a reading advances
> and then recedes.
> >
> > In the end I don't care if Kai dislikes IV or if he thinks Arno Schmidt
> better or worse than writers from Gruppe 47; his statement simply makes me
> wonder about the value of TP's work in our lives.
> >
> > Respectfully,
> > MC otis
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: jochen stremmel<jstremmel at gmail.com>
> > To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>  Cc:"
> pynchon-l at waste.org"  <pynchon-l at waste.org>  Sent: Friday, November 9,
> 2012 6:06 PM
> > Subject: Re: No novels from Roth anymore
> >
> > It may suck for you. It drips for me.
> >
> >
> > 2012/11/9 Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>:
> >> As the saying goes: Die Retourkutsche fährt nur von zwölf bis mittags.
> >>
> >> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1208&msg=167246&sort=date
> >>
> >> And yes, IV sucks.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 09.11.2012 16:39, jochen stremmel wrote:
> >>> Why does that (of all places: here) endlessly repeated reproach remind
> >>> me of Lichtenberg's aphorism about the book and the head that bang
> >>> together?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2012/11/9 rich<richard.romeo at gmail.com>:
> >>>> cause it sucked?
> >>>>
> >>>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Matthew Cissell<macissell at yahoo.es>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>> Why?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ________________________________
> >>>>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> >>>>> To: pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >>>>> Sent: Friday, November 9, 2012 1:19 PM
> >>>>> Subject: No novels from Roth anymore
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> http://www.lesinrocks.com/2012/10/07/livres/philip-roth-nemesis-sera-mon-dernier-livre-11310126/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Philip Roth, now collaborating with his biographer, does not create
> >>>>> literary
> >>>>> art anymore. This makes me think whether Pynchon is still writing.
> >>>>> Wouldn't
> >>>>> it be a pity if Inherent Vice turned out to be his last book?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
>
>
>
>
>
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